Gholam

Gholam is a feature film written and directed by the British-Iranian artist Mitra Tabrizian, produced by Zadoc Nava and starring Shahab Hosseini (winner of the Grand Jury prize for Best Actor award at Cannes in 2016 for Asghar Farhadi's Oscar winner The Salesman).

Premiered at WorldFest - International Film Festival 2017, Houston, USA, and nominated for a prestigious REMI Special Jury Award.

The film brings together two of the most prominent Iranian actors from before and after the 1979 revolution, Behrouz Behnejad and Shahab Hosseini, the recipient of the grand jury prize for Best Actor at Cannes, 2016.

Inspired by a real character, an enigmatic Iranian exile featured in Mitra's 2006 award winning photographic series Border, on Iranians in exile, Gholam is the story of one man's search for a sense of purpose in the alien environment – a man with no expectations who has been through a revolution, a war and a change of landscape.

Set in London in 2011, Gholam is the story of an enigmatic Iranian cab driver, who works at night and doesn't like to talk about his past.

He has two jobs, yet seems not to be interested in the money. He eats at his uncle's café every day, yet is fully aware of being betrayed by him. He agrees to the arrangement his mother makes for his return home, yet has no intention of going back. We learn that he was once a war hero, and yet disappeared from the battlefield without a trace.

A man with no past, no future, no convictions, he still gets involved in the conflict of a total stranger and carries it through to the very end.

UK premiere at the East End Film Festival 2017 (Discovery section), London.